YELLOWKNIFE - Helen Kronstal was terrified as she walked off the ship and onto Halifax's famed Pier 21, where more than a million immigrants streamed into Canada following the Second World War.

It was 1949. She had survived the Nazi invasion of her native Poland, forced labour in Austria, and the chaos that gripped Europe following Germany's collapse.

She was proficient in several languages. Kronstal spoke Polish, Ukrainian, German and a bit of Russian but couldn't grasp the wave of English that greeted her when she left the ship and crossed the pier into Canada.

"When I came across the bridge, everybody was speaking English," Kronstal laughed while seated at the kitchen table in her apartment at the Mary Murphy Seniors Home, recalling her fear.

"I couldn't understand anybody. 'What have I done,' I said. 'Why did I come here?'"

It was after the war while in Austria that she met two nurses from Montreal who told her Canada was the place to be.

Kronstal was working as a nurse's aide at a tuberculosis clinic in Salzburg, Austria. Though she was a great asset to the clinic because she could speak German where most of the other nurse's aides spoke Russian, she didn't have many reasons to stay.

Her mother was dead, struck down by tuberculosis when Kronstal was only five. Her father too was dead, murdered in 1944. The Germans had sent Kronstal and her older sister Zofia away during the war to work as forced labourers. Kronstal's cousins, during the anarchy that reigned as the Germans retreated and the Soviets advanced, killed her father and took over his house.

Kronstal returned to Poland and her hometown of Sietesz with her son Lenny in 2005.

She pulls a plush pillow from her bed on which is stitched a map of present-day Poland to show where Sietesz is, at the extreme southeast of the country.

She was born there on Aug. 1, 1926, with the maiden name Andryjowycz.

Sietesz was a small farming village, and Kronstal's father, a Ukrainian pensioner from the Austrian imperial army, had settled there after the First World War. They weren't rich but they had a house and some land on which grew orchards of apples, pears, plums, and mighty pecan trees.

"They took my father out to the fields," Kronstal said of her cousins. "I found out he had to dig his own grave."

She visited her old house, which her niece had since sold, but not her father's grave. She couldn't bear it.

Kronstal didn't know what happened to her sister Zofia. She searched for her through the Red Cross after the war but turned up nothing.

"I tried and tried before and after coming to Canada but I couldn't find her," she said.

Kronstal's immediate family was broken up within a couple years of the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

"My sister got a letter and she had to be at the community hall or otherwise they would've taken me or my father and beaten us very hard," said Kronstal.

"She was sent to farmers, and so was I sent to farmers the next year."

Kronstal was shipped off to a farm in Austria, where she toiled for more than three years milking cows, cleaning barns and cutting hay.

Kronstal points to a scar on her hand.

"I have many cuts on my hands," she said.

"See this one, a scythe fell on it. So many cuts but that's OK."

The family who owned the farm treated her reasonably well, although the room in which she slept was cold and it made her sick. Her father had written the farmers a letter and they were impressed by his German, which he had learned during his stint with Austrian army and which he had later taught to his daughters. She suspects he had asked the farmers not to mistreat her.

Because Kronstal could speak German, Ukrainian, and Polish, she was often used as an interpreter to communicate with the other indentured workers. It was a mixed blessing. There came a day when the police came calling. A field boss was having trouble with one of his Ukrainian workers, who was part of a crew clearing trees in the bush.

"It was very hard work," said Kronstal. "They did not get enough to eat.

"(The Ukrainian man) said, 'You tell them, if they would give me a little more to eat I would be stronger. Then I could work harder but I can't because I am hungry. I'm always hungry.'"

He was accompanied by the field boss and a big, burly policeman, and the worker begged Kronstal not to leave.

"He said, 'Please don't go. They will kill me here,'" said Kronstal.

"I just cried and cried."

In 1943, Kronstal was given permission to visit her sister, who was working on a farm in Germany.

It was a dangerous journey. Her papers identified her as Ukrainian, who were not high on the Nazis' list of preferred nationalities.

If she were to have a run-in with an unsympathetic official, she might find herself bundled off to a concentration camp, regardless of whether or not she had permission to travel.

While on the train she was stopped. A man asked her for identification.

"But the guy only looked at the picture, and I was off again," said Kronstal.

"Could you imagine, a kid like me just travelling so far away. I got there, and visited her, and I came back by myself."

Kronstal fell ill in early 1945. She had developed arthritis in her knees, which was aggravated by the chill in her sleeping quarters. She was taken to a hospital where she remained for the rest of the war in relative peace.

After that, she was taken to Salzburg where there were hot springs to soothe her arthritis.

It was there that she took some courses in nursing. Her mother and the tuberculosis that claimed her was still very much on her mind. She wanted to know if she could have been saved.

Kronstal worked at the TB clinic for three years before coming to Canada.

She had a job awaiting her. She had been offered a one-year contract to work as nurse's aide in Cornwall, Ont.

But it was a very different experience in Cornwall. In Austria, she had proved her worth with her language skills - an important asset when it came to administrative work - but here she didn't know the language.

After her contract expired, Kronstal headed for Toronto where she knew some friends from Salzburg were living.

She took on some menial jobs, housekeeping and cleaning.

In February 1950, she attended her roommate's wedding and it was there that she met Joe Kronstal, a man from Saskatchewan who was working at a plastics plant at the time.

"He asked me for a dance and I said, 'OK, but I promised those two guys to dance first, so I danced with them first," said Kronstal.

"I just couldn't get rid of him and in two months we were married."

Three months later, the couple moved to Leross, Sask., after Joe's parents sent word that they needed help on their farm where they grew wheat and raised cattle, pigs and chickens.

Kronstal would spend the next 44 years of her life there.

The young family moved into an old farmhouse shortly after Walter was born the following year. The couple had six children in all: Walter, Joe Jr., Gerald, Lenny, Caroline and David.

There was no running water or central heating in the old farm house. Kronstal had to haul water to the house from a lake at the bottom of a hill.

In the meantime, she worked the garden, washed clothes, and baked the bread.

All along Kronstal wondered what had happened to her sister Zofia. She continued to press the Red Cross for help but without luck.

But then the dreams came where the name Sadzawka danced tantalizingly in her head. After a while she realized it was the name of the town where her sister's Ukrainian fiancé was from.

Kronstal had met the man when she went to visit her sister during the war, and his name was on the back of a photo Zofia had sent her during their incarceration.

What if I wrote a letter to that town? she thought, Maybe she is there?

She wrote, but heard nothing back for some time and assumed that her letter had gone unanswered.

But then one day in 1955, her husband came back from the post office with a strange letter in hand.

"I didn't see the writing, just the picture," said Kronstal.

"I said, 'what picture is that? It looks like somebody from the old country.'"

It was Zofia. After 13 years with no contact, Kronstal learned her sister had survived the war and was married.

Zofia later moved back to Poland with her husband and returned to Sietesz and their family home. It wasn't until 1977 that the two sisters were reunited in person. Kronstal flew back to Poland for a visit after Zofia's husband died.

In 1962, the Kronstals built a new house. Still no central heating, just a wood stove, but the family had plumbing and running water by the next year - no more going down the hill to fetch water.

Kronstal pulls out a photo of a heavily-wooded lane with thick stands of Siberian elm, green ash and Manitoba maple among other trees planted outside their house.

"Those trees, I planted those," said Kronstal. "One year, we planted 2,100 trees."

Kronstal was a stay-at-home mom during most of her years living on the Saskatchewan prairie. She returned for a time to nursing at a nearby Catholic hospital during the early 1970s. She got another job at a poultry processing plant, a 42-mile drive from home.

In 1980, while looking into courses on how to become a home care provider, Kronstal talked to a woman who was heading to a seminar on reflexology in Regina. Kronstal talked her husband into going with her.

"At the very first seminar, it was very hard because we had to work on each other to learn how," said Kronstal.

"I had a Frenchman working on me, and he pressed really hard on my toes. 'Ouch,' I said. 'That hurt.' I couldn't see really well without my glasses, and he said, 'maybe it will help you.'"

Heading home, Kronstal was in so much pain she could hardly walk but after stopping in town to pick up the newspaper she couldn't believe her eyes.

In the newspaper was an advertisement for the pigs she was raising at home. To her surprise, she could read the ad without her glasses.

Kronstal started going to every reflexology seminar she could find, whether it be in Moose Jaw, Saskatoon or Regina.

Two years later, she passed an exam and was certified as a practising reflexologist.

She purchased a large massage table at an auction, and Joe found an old recliner at the dump, which Kronstal reupholstered so people could sit in it while she worked on their feet.

People came to the farm from far around for treatment. Kronstal still performs the occasional treatment at the senior's home.

In 1994, after 44 years of marriage, Kronstal and Joe separated. With her children all grown up and starting families of their own, Kronstal decided it was time to leave Saskatchewan.

She turned north to Yellowknife where her son Joe Jr. was living with his family, including wife Sharon, daughters Alana and Karen and son Gregory. Kronstal has 10 grandchildren altogether, plus one great-grandchild.

Wanting some privacy and wishing to live around older people, Kronstal didn't stay her at son's home for long. Within the year, Kronstal acquired an apartment at Mary Murphy's, where she has been ever since.

She is happy to have her own stove, cupboards and fridge.

"I have my own bathroom," said Kronstal.

"People don't realize how important a bathroom is."

Behind her apartment, Kronstal grew a garden lush with cabbage, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, parsnip and turnips.

In 2004, the city handed her the Seniors in Bloom award for best garden.

She doesn't know if she will plant a garden this year. She recently underwent hip surgery which didn't turn out very well.

Last year, she suffered a scary fall.

"I was carrying two ice cream pails of carrots, and as I was walking on the sidewalk I couldn't lift my legs," said Kronstal.

"I thought, I better go on the grass in case I fall down, and sure enough I did fall."

Kronstal says she enjoys Yellowknife, her shopping trips with her son Joe, and especially her weekly visits to the Baker Centre to meet with other seniors.

After 13 years at Mary Murphy's she would like to stay but she feels pressure to move to Aven Centre where there is more care but less independence.

"I have no complaints at all," said Kronstal. "I like it here. They want me to move to Aven Court. They say, 'you've given so much to other people, it's time to get some back.' So far, I don't need much care."